Abous us

International Research Team and Exchange

A special feature of the exhibition is the variety of nationalities of those involved in the project. In addition to two historians from Switzerland, a curator and a photographer from Cape Town, eighteen students from the University of Basel and the University of Namibia worked on the project. While always one group at a time was working in the exhibition, which was set up in the old municipality building of Usakos, the other groups did research on the four topics ‘Culture and Sports’, ‘Migrant Labour’, ‘Hakhaseb and Erongosig, the two new locations, and ‘Bodorp’. Each group was joined by a local contact person of the ‘Usakos Youth Group’, who helped them translating, finding interview partners and other things. In Usakos we, the students,  were involved in the set-up of the exhibition; in Basel we additionally contribute our research results to the travelling exhibition. For this purpose there will be a second student exchange shortly before the opening, only this time it is our turn to welcome our Namibian colleagues in our town. The differences of the permanent exhibition in Usakos and the traveling version in Europe lie in the varying target audiences and the lack of reference to the region. Thus, in Europe the focus lies more on the exemplarity of the town and its history.